The Good News and the Bad News
by Mithostwen
Summary: Both crews of the Ebon Hawk, plus several thousand generic and nameless NPCs, react to the news that The Old Republic is in development instead of a KOTOR III, and discuss what this will mean for their next 300 years…


**The Bad News and the Good News**

By Mithostwen

**Disclaimer:** I do not own these characters or their universe. And yes, I'm somewhat frustrated that the people who do have chosen to go this direction instead of one that would provide any kind of conclusive ending to the first two games. All the same, I can't bring myself to be too mad at BioWare, LucasArts, and Obsidian since without them, there would be no KOTOR at all. This is simply me coping with my disappointment through humor.

* * *

"Hmm."

Revan opened his eyes, shaking himself out of the slight stupor he always felt after delving into the deepest levels of the Force. He didn't look concerned, merely thoughtful, but everyone in the crowd gathered around him began murmuring amongst themselves nevertheless. And it was a large crowd—composed as it was of every single character in the Knights of the Old Republic universe.

"What did he see?" Mission whispered to Bastila, elbowing the eternally composed Jedi Sentinel in the side.

"A little patience, Mission," she said with a look of mild disapproval. "I'm sure he'll announce it to the galaxy at large soon enough."

"_Patience_. Easy for you to say. You can read his mind," the teenage Twi'lek muttered. "You just like knowing before the rest of us."

Bastila pretended not to hear her.

"Well? What did you see?" Carth asked Revan directly, as easily irritated at being left out of the loop as ever.

Revan hesitated another long moment before answering, during which everyone else waited with bated breath.

T3 helpfully emitted a series of encouraging toodles and beeps, which only Revan, the Exile, Bao-Dur, and the other droids understood. This simply irritated everyone else even further.

"Well," Revan said at last, standing and addressing the whole crowd. "The bad news is this: it looks like our story is not going to be continued—at least not anytime soon. The good news is that the substitute, which takes place three hundred years in the future when all of us are most likely dead or rusting (with the possible exception of my masterfully built assassin droid) looks pretty epic."

"Epic? Who cares?" someone yelled.

"Yeah! What about us?" someone equally nameless chimed in. "I want to know if I ever beat the Exile's cocky little boyfriend at Pazaak!"

"I can answer that one: it's a no," Atton said with a smirk. "Since they cut out my games against the trash-compactor, only the player character can beat me. And she won't play for credits, so technically, I'm invincible."

"Which is why I don't let you play Pazaak anymore," she reminded him, giving him a playful punch in the arm. "Unless it's against me. Or someone I particularly hate."

"Do you hate the Disciple yet?"

"No, for the hundredth time. Leave Mical alone."

"Just checking," he said, shooting her his most rakish grin.

"Go flirt somewhere else. We're talking serious business here," some random alien cut in.

"Hey, give us a break," Atton protested. "All the romance got cut from our game."

"No, our Aqualish friend is right," the Exile said. "We probably have all eternity to sit here in limbo listening to your witty banter, but this is our only shot at actually _doing_ something again."

"I don't like 'doing something.' With you, that always means finding more people who want to kill us."

"Atton. _Shut. Up_."

"All right, but only because it's you asking. Or… demanding."

"Have I ever mentioned my theory that the developers only added him to the game to compensate for the massive quantity of dialogue they were forced to cut?" Mical asked the Exile, blinking at her with old-fashioned sincerity.

"And here _I_ thought it was to compensate for the fact that the game would put all the female players and fanfiction writers to sleep if you were the only love interest," Mira retorted, quirking an eyebrow and shooting him a mischievous look twice as interesting as any of his lines.

"Mira, Atton doesn't need any more help bashing him. Leave the poor guy alone," the Exile intervened, clamping a hand over her scoundrel's mouth before he could get in another wisecrack. "And Mical, don't try to one-up Atton at his own game. You're awful at it. Now, let's all just pretend we aren't a completely dysfunctional crew for five minutes so Revan can talk."

"I _was_ finished, actually, but I appreciate your consideration," Revan said.

"But aren't we going to _do_ somesing about zis?" Juhani demanded, anger building in her inexplicably accented voice.

Revan looked as if he wanted to say yes, but couldn't justify doing so.

"I don't see what we _can_ do," he admitted, "since we're trapped here in this dead-end universe until they decide to make us a threequel."

"But this new game—it's in _our _future, isn't it? Won't these new characters end up here sooner or later?" Mission asked.

"Do _you _want to wait three hundred years?" Carth said sarcastically.

"The Rakatans have super-advanced technology. Make them build a time machine," she suggested, as if it were the obvious solution.

"We can't do that," the Exile said with a sigh. "Time travel is the only piece of advanced technology we aren't allowed to have."

"I don't know. What about teleportation?" Bao-Dur pointed out. "With my unparalleled tech skills, I should have been able to pull that one off. The writers have to be deliberately sabotaging me."

"That's because _Star Trek_ beat us to that one, I'm afraid," she explained, laying a sympathetic hand on his cheap plot device of an arm. "If we used it now, it would look like we were copying them."

"Hopeful query: Master, is there any possibility of transporting me to the universe that created us so that I might assassinate the meatbags who refuse to grant us time-travel capabilities?" HK-47 asked Revan.

"I think that might be a bit of a step backwards, since they're the only ones with the power to write us a canonical future," he said. "And even if we wanted to, I doubt we have the technology to do that either."

Bao-Dur shook his head in corroboration.

"No one from our game has managed to move from one universe to another yet, at least not in any form besides action figure."

There were general grumblings at this.

"Well, how about in the future?" another conveniently nameless person chimed in. "Ask the mean, scary old lady if anyone has managed it in the future."

The Exile rolled her eyes.

"Kreia won't talk," she explained for the thousandth time. "She's sick of everyone always asking her to see their future."

"But she's the only one with that power! Who else are we supposed to ask?"

The Exile gave one of her silent little sighs and prepared to give an answer that was probably far kinder than the one Mira interrupted with.

"Let's see, how about no one?" the huntress suggested, willing to trample on a few thousand people's feelings in a way the Exile was not. "You guys don't even_ have _futures for her to predict, just like you have no back-stories. And no matter how many times you ask, that fact isn't gonna change."

"That still makes us better than you," a totally generic man yelled back, "flaunting your stupid name and your stupid future in our faces!"

"Let me just remind everyone that we don't even know if the withered old witch's predictions are accurate," Atton cut in, taking over before Mira did any more damage. "She only predicts stuff that happens at least ten years in the future, so none of it has actually come true."

"That's enough," Kreia said, mysteriously appearing out of nowhere, as was her habit. "All you imbeciles need know is that if you do not cease your disgraceful whining and begging, I will break you. I will twist your minds until you scream at the sight of your own faces. I will tap into your innermost fears and manipulate you into being my pawns for the rest of eternity, all the while pretending it isn't obvious that I'm a Sith. Does that satisfy your questions?"

"…"

Everyone suddenly found the dirt, or the sky, or Mical's personality, much more interesting than having their future predicted.

"So," said Revan, feeling obligated to break the silence as the only one who wasn't afraid of Kreia, "I think that about wraps up this meeting."

"But we haven't decided on a plan of action," Carth objected.

"Don't you mean _Revan_ hasn't decided on a plan of action?" Canderous corrected him. "No one else seems to have any grasp of what constitutes a logical strategy, or any amount of initiative whatsoever."

"I do too," the Exile argued. "Well… I have the initiative anyway. I admit I probably should have realized that activating a superweapon right next to my fleet was not the best idea as strategies go. But Revan came up with the plan, so I assumed it was nothing short of genius."

"Excuse me, but it _was_ genius," Revan said. "You simply forget that I had fallen to the Dark Side. Killing several thousand of my own birds with the same stone I was using to kill the Mandalorian one was extraordinarily efficient."

"Query: Master, is that permission to follow your shining example?" The assassin droid looked greedily around at the large crowd of suddenly nervous-looking metaphorical birds.

"No. I'm a light-side point junkie now. Can't you see it in my heroic good posture and lack of crackly zombie skin or smoldering 'vegetarian' vampire eyes?"

"Meeting adjourned!" Mission cried suddenly, banging a blaster on T3's head like a gavel. Unfortunately, the safety was off. Even more unfortunately, the discharging weapon failed to destroy G0-T0. The Exile "subtly" used the Force to redirect the laser beam so that it came back and hit its mark. The obnoxiously elitist ball of circuitry exploded in a shower of sparks.

"Oh yeah? Who died and made _you_ judge?" a cranky little kid challenged as soon as the echoes died.

"Revan," she said, flipping her Lekku smugly.

"Nuh-uh," the kid countered, pointing at the decidedly living and breathing Revan.

"Well, okay, he ain't dead," Mission amended, rolling her eyes, "but he told me to cut this meeting short if the chitchat got too pointless. We've moved on to references to other fictional universes nobody here knows. That's pointless enough for me."

It was pointless enough for the author too.

THE END


End file.
